What's on Today

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Published: September 1, 2012

8 P.M. (Showtime) OUR IDIOT BROTHER (2011) Ned, a sweet, goofy man-child played by Paul Rudd, above, trustingly sells a bag of weed to a police officer in a bohemian stretch of upstate New York and lands in jail. After he's released on parole, he goes home to find that his lady friend (Kathryn Hahn) has taken up with another hippie type and refuses to give up custody of Willie Nelson, their dog. So Ned heads to Brooklyn, crashing with each of his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Zooey Deschanel and Elizabeth Banks) and upending their cosmopolitan routines in this comedy, directed by Jesse Peretz from a screenplay by Evgenia Peretz (his sister) and David Schisgall. ''Far too much in 'Our Idiot Brother' is much too easy, including the soft, sentimental indulgence it lavishes on Ned and the satirical barbs it flings at his sisters,'' A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. Still, he added, ''This dude, who had seemed at first glance to be a lesser Lebowski, content to tend his garden and smoke a few nice buds, turns out to be a curiously retrograde paladin: the reluctant scourge and benevolent protector of bossy, wayward and otherwise messed-up women. And for all its sweetness, this movie leaves behind the sour taste of unexamined male entitlement. However clever those sisters may be, they cannot do it for themselves. Even if he's an idiot, brother knows best.''

NOON (13) RICHARD HEFFNER'S OPEN MIND Nicole Maestas, an economist with the RAND Corporation, discusses her Senate testimony on encouraging work at older ages.

8 P.M. (Nat Geo Wild) DOG WHISPERER Cesar Millan heads to the Daytona International Speedway in Florida to help the Nascar drivers Greg Biffle and Kevin Harvick deal with some unruly dogs.

8 P.M. (Discovery); 10 P.M. (Science) ONE GIANT LEAP: A NEIL ARMSTRONG TRIBUTE Footage of his last public appearance, as well as interviews with his Apollo 11 crew mates Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, is part of a tribute to Mr. Armstrong, right, the first man on the Moon, who died on Aug. 25.

8 P.M. (HBO) HOP (2011) E. B. (voiced by Russell Brand), the teenage son and reluctant heir of the Easter Bunny (Hugh Laurie), decides he's had it with delivering jelly beans and baskets and heads to Los Angeles to become a rock 'n' roll drummer, where he's taken in by a slacker, Fred O'Hare (James Marsden), after being hit by Fred's car. ''Connoisseurs of the school of cinema in which fuzzy animated creatures interact with hard-working, slightly desperate-looking human actors may find themselves, if not exactly delighted, then at least pleasantly tickled,'' A. O. Scott wrote in The Times. ''The rest of us, who endure such movies in the name of family harmony, masochism or lack of leisure-time imagination, may be happily surprised to emerge from the theater in something other than a state of murderous rage.''

9 P.M. (BBC America) DOCTOR WHO After being kidnapped by his oldest foe in this Season 7 premiere, the Doctor (Matt Smith) is forced to undertake an impossible mission in a place known as the Asylum, which even the Daleks are too terrified to enter.

9 P.M. (13) I WANT TO LIVE! (1958) After four nominations, Susan Hayward finally won an Oscar for this portrayal of Barbara Graham, a young mother of dubious moral character (translation: she frequents seedy bars and writes bad checks) who winds up in the gas chamber after being framed for murder. The actress ''has done some vivid acting in a number of sordid roles that have called for professional simulation of personal ordeals of the most upsetting sort,'' Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times. ''But she's never done anything so vivid or so shattering to an audience's nerves.''

10 P.M. (Sundance) THE SEA INSIDE (2004) Javier Bardem, left, stars as Ram?ampedro, a former ship's mechanic fighting for the right to die after living as a quadriplegic for nearly 30 years, in this drama directed by Alejandro Amen?r, which won an Oscar for best foreign film. ''Mr. Bardem, acting above the neck (except in brief flashbacks and fantasies), creates a complicated male character, volatile and witty, with a poet's soul,'' Stephen Holden wrote in The Times. But, he added, citing another of Mr. Amen?r's films, ''In the end, suspenseful narrative devices that worked so effectively in a gothic fantasy like 'The Others' feel contrived when applied to what's supposed to be a true story of life, death and the living hell from which Ram?inally escapes.'' KATHRYN SHATTUCK